ACCHO HUMANITARIAN AWARDS

ACCHO has honoured Alan Li and Haoua Inoua with the ACCHO Humanitarian Award in recognition of their exceptional efforts to improve the wellbeing of African, Caribbean and Black people living with HIV/AIDS (PHAs) in Ontario. The awards were presented at the Ontario African, Caribbean and Black PHA Summit held in Toronto in November 2008. The Summit was organized by working group under the auspices of ACCHO, the Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment (CAAT) and the Ontario AIDS Network (OAN).

Alan is a primary care physician at Regent Park Community Health Centre in Toronto. He is also co-chair of CAAT, a coalition of health and community service providers working to eliminate treatment access barriers for immigrant, refugee and non-status PHAs in Canada. Alan co-founded of the Ethnoracial Treatment Support Network, which developed multi-lingual treatment information and peer counseling for culturally diverse PHAs.

Previously, Alan was the medical director at Casey House Hospice and president of the Asian Community AIDS Services. In addition to his work at Regent Park Community Health Centre, Alan is a community-based research fellow at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network.

Haoua is originally from Chad, and has been living in Canada since the mid-1990s. She has been volunteering at the AIDS Committee of Ottawa since 1999, focusing on advocacy, activism, peer support, education and health promotion.

Haoua is a member of African and Caribbean Health Network in Ottawa, a board member of Lowertown Community Resource Centre, and member of CAWI (City of all Women Initiative) in Ottawa. She has also worked at Somerset West Community Health Centre in Ottawa, doing HIV/AIDS prevention and support with African and Caribbean communities.

Two years ago Haoua helped to form the first African-Caribbean women’s peer support group in Ottawa. The group works to create a special place for African and Caribbean women living with HIV/AIDS to share their experiences about living with HIV/AIDS, support each other and share information and resources.